Free trip to Mars, anyone? T-Mobile’s CEO is offering a ride to the red planet

T-Mobile boss John Legere tweeted on Wednesday that when he joined the company, “people thought I was from Mars.” While some may actually still believe this to be the case, most people are just happy to have the charismatic CEO here on Earth entertaining the masses with his unique approach to brand promotion.

Taking his marketing antics to a whole new level, Legere’s tweet also included an announcement of a grand contest with a stellar prize: a free trip to his homeland Mars.

We’re not making it up. Legere has promised to give away a trip to Mars if his message gets a million retweets by October 11.

To enter, all you have to do is retweet the post below and cross your fingers. The winner will be announced next week.

Now, if a Mars trip doesn’t look as if it’s going to become a realistic possibility anytime soon – Elon Musk’s SpaceX team is aiming ambitiously for manned flights in a decade or so – or the winner simply doesn’t fancy the idea of an inconveniently long space flight, Legere will offer a $200,000 cash prize instead. Which doesn’t sound too bad at all.

If the retweets fall short of a million but reach 100,000, the T-Mobile boss will give away a zero gravity experience instead, and for 50,000 retweets a zero gravity chair. Should the elaborate stunt fizzle and make it only to 10,000 retweets, the prize will be a flight to anywhere in the U.S. with a maximum ticket cost of $800.

A lucky winner will be pulled from the hat on October 12 and notified by direct message soon after. Importantly, the winner must respond within three hours of receiving notification of their prize or else they “may be disqualified.”

Oh, and there is a reason for the contest. It’s to celebrate Legere reaching three million followers on Twitter.

Hitting a million retweets is not beyond the realms of possibility. Ellen DeGeneres, for example, managed it within just a few hours of tweeting a celeb-packed photo from the 2014 Oscars, a post that’s now received more than 3.3 million retweets. At the time of writing, however, Legere’s has a mere 5,400.